Yes - this is not Reddit.

Which is exactly why I’m not going to stand for a poster trying to saddle me with some asinine strawman version of my actual points.

The other poster self-evidently believed that I was either so stupid that I actually believed that “this is all the fault of the Democrats” or that I was so stupid that I’d let that ridiculous strawman slide. And in either case fully deserved a verbal smack upside the head, and that specifically because this isn’t Reddit. Leave that sort of cheap, intellectually dishonest bullshit there.

I hesitate to post this, but…

I actually have experience with that.

And unfortunately, nothing I did worked, and ultimately I had to get away to save my own sanity

The problem was that she had effectively perfect defenses. In most cases, she could twist whatever I said to further “prove” that she was right and I was wrong, and in the rare cases in which I managed to say something that finally backed her into a corner from which she couldn’t spin it back against me, that, to her, just “proved” that I (or, often, “everybody”) hated her / wanted to hurt her / didn’t care about her / wanted to see her suffer / etc.

I never once, as far as I could tell, actually got through to her.

The media was making the democrats out to be the ones shutting down the nations airports.

So?

Exactly as I already said:

no matter how much they tried to dodge the responsibility, the majority of people blamed Republican intransigence for the shutdown

That’s what the polls consistently showed, and notably that was in spite of the fact that so much of the media tried to pin the blame on the Democrats.

So your claim here isn’t just irrelevant - it’s actually part of the support for my position. Yes - the captive media tried to blame the Democrats. But the people weren’t buying it.

But Schumer and the Democrats folded anyway.

and further empower the republicans

Nobody is empowering the Republicans more than Schumer and Jeffries and the rest of the establishment Democrats, who can’t even be arsed to do their jobs

You might be a russian troll…

lol

Of course not. Don’t be a simpleton.

The Republicans rather obviously bear the lion’s share of the blame.

However, that was the Republicans’ designated role from the start. Their job was to represent the interests of their plutocratic cronies and patrons by killing a program that spent money to benefit poor people, so they were just doing what they were meant to do and what they were expected to do.

On the other hand, the Democrats’ job was to protect a program that benefitted poor people, and they miserably failed at that job. In fact, they didn’t even simply fail - they forfeited. They gave up even trying.

And they very much deserve condemnation for that.

Remember when the government was shut down specifically because the Democrats refused to go along with a bill that ended the health insurance subsidies, and they had the Republicans up against the ropes because no matter how much they tried to dodge the responsibility, the majority of people blamed Republican intransigence for the shutdown?

Then remember how the Schumer-led Democrats just completely folded, passed the bill, then stood idly by as the chance to extend the subsidies vanished?

Every single one of those stinking traitorous shitbags needs to be primaried.

Reminder that the President of the United States is profoundly mentally ill

No shit?

This, to me, is the most significant and most bizarre fact about the current era - the President of the United States is rather obviously deeply and profoundly mentally ill.

Which would be relevant if the goal actually was to cut spending, but it never was

The goal was to eliminate agencies and purge principled employees from surviving agencies in order to provide immediate benefit to the oligarchy, and to facilitate their longer term goal of institutionalizing their unchallenged dominion over the US. And at that, it was a resounding success.

I really think that, from Trump on down, they sincerely just don’t have the emotional maturity to act any differently.

Well noted, and yes.

That’s just the sort of thing that happens when spoiled, petulant children throw tantrums.

“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment—explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure,” the letter, shared to the Associated Press, reads, “is classic intolerance.” And, Grenell continues, “Your action surrenders to the sad bullying tactics employed by certain elements on the left, who have sought to intimidate artists into boycotting performances.”

Grenell also took personal jabs at Redd in the letter, claiming that his show wasn’t popular. “The contrast between the public’s lack of interest in your show with the success we are experiencing under our new chairman is drastic,” Grenell wrote. Trump’s board elected him as chairman in February. “The most avant-garde and well-regarded performers in your genre will still perform regularly,” he added, “and unlike you, they’ll do it to sold–out crowds regardless of their political leanings.”

One of the most notably bizarre things about the Trump regime, to me, is how childish they are. From Trump on down, so many of them literally act like spoiled, petulant children throwing public tantrums.

Truly, the most accurate term for this government is kakistocracy

Of course they’re not releasing the autopsy - they’re already planning to continue using the same failed strategies.

The single most important thing to understand about the DNC is that their first priority is collecting enormous piles of soft money from corporations and billionaires. That’s more important to them than any other consideration, including winning elections.

Their primary purpose is not trying to ensure that Democrats win, but trying to ensure that leftists do not, because that’s the exact service their corporate and billionaire donors are buying from them.

And if that means running corrupt neolib hacks who can’t gain enough voter support to win, then that’s just the way it goes. They’ll just fold the fact of their loss into their future donation pitches - they’ll point to the harm the Republican winner has inevitably done, and say that that’s exactly why “we need your support now more than ever.”

So what the autopsy certainly points to as their failures are not, from the DNC’s self-serving viewpoint, failures at all. They’re strategies that they not only very deliberately pursued, but that they have every intention of continuing to pursue. Even if that means they’re going to keep losing elections. Just so long as the soft money keeps flowing.

Remember when the term “Orwellian” was often treated as somewhat ridiculous, because western governments, censorious and propagandistic as they might be, still didn’t rise to anything close to that extreme a level?

A “physical property”, in this context, may be a metaphysical or logical combination of properties which are not physical in the ordinary sense.

lol

I’ve been watching as ontology has gone sideways since the new generation of blinkered STEMites decided they were qualified to weigh in on it, but this goes even beyond what I cynically expected.

Sorry, but no. Yours is the misunderstanding.

You’re conflating physicalism and materialism.

That’s the current version of a power fantasy he’s had ever since he was the nerdy kid getting picked on by the mean kids on the playground.

Those are conceptual terms.

What is doubt’s shape? Its size? Its mass? Of what elements is it composed?

If physicalism is true, then either those questions have answers or doubt does not exist.

He’s an unqualified, paychopathic piece of shit and a fucking war criminal and the best the US media can do is speculate that maybe the deranged toddler-in-chief might maybe not support him quite as much as he used to because maybe a few of the brazenly traitorous Republican scumbags in Congress might actually take issue with him.

2025 is going to go down in history as the year that the US dropped all pretense of being rational or legitimate and went full bug-eyed insane.

Any reason to doubt physicalism?

Describe “doubt” in purely physical terms.

Of course.

None of this is or ever has been about crime, or even really about immigrants, undocumented or otherwise.

It is and always has been about establishing precedents by which to expand governmental authority.

What they’re building is a system in which anonymous federal agents will be seen to have the right to black-bag anyone, regardless of whether they can be charged with a crime or not, and disappear them.

They started with undocumented immigrants justifiably accused of other crimes because that was the easiest case to be made both legally and popularly, but they never had any intention of stopping there. They’re going to keep expanding until they reach the point that they can do it to anyone, any time, for any reason.